In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane in the East End of London

Tower Hamlets Advertisements, 1967

March 3, 2018

by the gentle author

To divert me while I have been poorly, Stefan Dickers the Archivist at Bishopsgate Institute kindly sent me these wonderful advertisements from a History of Tower Hamlets produced by the council in 1967 and I could not resist showing them to you. Fifty years later, it is poignant to contemplate these proud images of manufacturing and long-established local businesses which are now all gone.

Feel better. While it is wonderful that you are soldiering on, your faithful readers hope that you
will put your well-being as the top priority. (well, naturally)
Sending best wishes from the Hudson Valley — where we got a foot of snow yesterday.
(Two words to consider: Chicken soup! )

What a wonderful collection. And how what was ordinary becomes extraordinary in the twinkling of an eye that is our lifetime. I find it difficult to know whether these are from fifty or a hundred years ago, so dated are the typefaces, so rich and rare the vocabulary (wharfingers, stevedores, steamer berths, liners, nurses’ homes) and so long gone the ways of doing and making things. I notice a great deal of harking back even then in the illustrations used, and how firms still seemed to be hanging on to telephone exchanges with letters (SHOreditch, BIShopsgate) while others used numbers only. I had to laugh at Allen and Hanburys taking credit for the Tower in Tower Hamlets, which had like all the current London Boroughs only been created in 1965. No wonder people get nostalgic for all that manufacturing that went on whether on a large or as in most of these a small scale. More please! Also, hope you get well soon.

I noticed in the T.&W IDE Ltd advertisement for the glass doors at Canada House Trafalgar Sq. they made.The coat of arms featured is of the little known province of Canada in which I reside New Brunswick.Nice coincidence.Thanks.

Wonderful adverts evoking so many old memories of things gone by.
I’m puzzled by the expression Best Ante Post Prices in the Betting advert! Still haven’t worked out what that’s meant to mean.
I do hope you are fully recovered now from when this was posted last month.

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